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Lecture 34 – The Milky Way Galaxy
Summary / Checklist of the Main Concepts to Understand and Remember
| What is the Milky Way? | ||
| • | How did our view of the Milky Way change after Galileo's observations in the 1600s? | |
| • | What is the concept of an "island universe", and when did we find out that there are other galaxies outside ours? | |
| • | How is the "Milky Way" that we see in the sky related to the Milky Way galaxy? How much of the galaxy are we seeing in the sky at night? | |
| Size and Structure | ||
| • | What is the general shape of our galaxy, and what are the disk, bulge, and halo? | |
| • | What is the difference between the types of objects we find in the disk and in the halo of our galaxy? | |
| • | How wide is our galaxy, and approximately how many stars does it contain? How do we know those things? | |
| • | How do we know in what direction the center of our galaxy is? Why can't we use regular telescopes to look there, and What can we use? | |
| • | What is the object in the middle, How massive is it, and How do we know? | |
| • | In what part of the galaxy are we, and How far out from the center is our location? | |
| Evolution and Motion | ||
| • | How did our galaxy form? (What is one important difference with respect to the way stars form?) How did it get to have this shape? | |
| • | Are stars being formed right now? In what part of the galaxy? Are stars in the disk and the halo made of exactly the same type of material? | |
| • | Approximately how fast do stars in our galaxy move? What is so puzzling about this fact? | |
| • | What do we think will be the eventual fate of our galaxy, billions of years from now? | |
| • | What is right outside our galaxy, and what evidence do we have that our galaxy may have absorbed smaller ones in the past? | |
Topics from the lecture page and textbook not listed above [or between square brackets]
were not covered in class;
Underlined words indicate that I will expect students to remember a number or a name related to that topic.
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